Sugar, Sugar: Addiction and Depression

I realized this morning that I am depressed--for the first time in...a month? The connection to sugar was inescapable, but nevertheless I did an internet search on "Can sugar cause depression?" I got back 27 million responses on Google.

Then I considered addiction. I already knew, know, and have known for a long time that sugar is addictive. Why do we do this to ourselves? Oh, one won't hurt...hah!

My sugar consumption began innocuously enough a week ago (on my unavoidable road trip to Idaho) with a spoonful of raspberry jam on a piece of home made bread. The next day I had another piece of bread and jam AND that evening I ate a rich dessert with my dinner. The next day I had the bread and jam AND a large Foster Freeze soft serve cone. The next day I had TWO Foster Freeze soft serve cones, and (upon finally getting home again), I ate bread with butter and HONEY until I was full (that's called binging). I ended the next day with TWO PINTS OF ICE CREAM. Last night I had THREE PIECES OF BIRTHDAY CAKE. Addiction? Duh!

So, I guess it's like being an alcoholic (or as I am, a cigarette-aholic): you can't have just one--ever.

Okay, back to basics, forgive and forget, today is the first day of the rest of my life.

Ruination by Road Trip

the trash bag in my car

It's just not fair! I had to take the trip. I brought along a baggie of cut up  chicken and a baggie of almonds. That's all I ate on the first day. Truthfully, at my destination I gave in to the pressure of my hostess and ate, horrors, b*r*e*a*d with, oh-my-God jam on it. But I also ate my protein shake. I absolutely did NOT binge. I practiced: I went out to dinner and had dessert, one piece only. Okay, so now I've really fallen. Carbs AND sugar. Oops, on the way home I had no more chicken pieces. So okay I ate a hamburger. One lousy hamburger. But I had no dinner that night; shouldn't that have helped? And okay, the next day I had an omelet with hash browns and a muffin with jam. But that was breakfast AND lunch. And okay, by the time I got home, I was so tired (is that an excuse?), I finally totally broke down and ate three (I guess three means binging?) everything bagels with butter and honey.

Congratulations girl! This morning the results are in. You gained five pounds and 1% fat. In four days.

As I said: it's just not fair.

Lessons learned: 1) Always, always, always have healthy, appropriate food in the car--which means plan and prepare ahead. 2) Never, never, never allow bad things like bread to hide out in your freezer.

Suppressed memories: I just remembered that I  TWICE   ate a large Foster Freeze soft-serve cone

Back to Basics

I've sadly come to the conclusion that the low carb diet doesn't work for me. Last night I was craving carbs for the first time. If there had been any sweet thing in the house, I doubt I could have resisted.For days I've been having to force down the protein. For two days I've been unable to face another egg scramble so breakfast has been a hard boiled egg. And worse yet, I didn't lose even one pound this past week.

For now I'm going to continue with the gluten free diet (Dr. Perlmutter's book was quite convincing regarding gluten and sugar); however, I'm giving up on the high fat, high protein.

So now what? Is counting calories my only option? I'm going back to the diet shake meals (Visalis powder, 1/2 cup cottage cheese, 1 cup fruit)  because life is then so simple. Depressing.

Plateau?

What the hell? I didn't lose five pounds this week. I lost NO POUNDS! In fact, I gained 1/2 pound. Now, that is just not fair.

Then again, who ever said life was fair?

So, what happened? I've heard of diet plateaus. I'll look them up, but I wonder if I just ate too many calories. After all, I didn't log my food this week.

Possibly I ate too many nuts. Dr. Perlmutter's book seduced me: eat all the fat you want as long as you don't eat carbs. Well, that was the message I got.

Poliquin's LifeStyle has a post about the low carb diet that says it's probably water. That would be nice. 'Course the author also says "no fruits, no whole-grain anything, no potatoes, NO EXCEPTIONS" so I worry about that 32g of pomegranate juice I drink every morning (which that study demonstrated will unclog my blood vessels).

Bottom line: depressing and confusing. I was going to resume logging to make sure I'm not overeating, but after perusing Poliquin's marvelous posts, I think I'm fine.

Subject for tomorrow: I have no energy at all and, under the circumstances, I don't think I can attribute that to diet. Can I? Does no carbs mean no energy? Even if you have enough calories? Definitely confusing. 

A New Paradigm

I've spent my entire life trying to avoid fat. Rarely, rarely ate anything fried, always avoiding food items high in fat like olives, avocado, bacon. Now here I am losing five pounds a week and LOOKING for olives and avocado, only two of those amazing foods with no carbs.

Just came back from the grocery store. This time my list contained avocado, raspberries (the ONLY fruit acceptable apparently, but what the heck, they're delicious),  plain Greek yogurt, asparagus, green beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, butter (by God I thought butter was the ultimate sin), and because I've run out already--eggs (a dozen just won't do any more), olives, meat, balsamic vinegar, and Dijon mustard. Then I went home and had a truly delicious lunch of

• salad greens
• hard boiled egg white
• 2-1/2 oz left over chicken
• 4 raspberries (cut in half)
• 1/8 avocado
• 1Tbsp sliced almonds
• 1Tbsp Balsamic vinegar
• 1Tbsp olive oil

I was eyeing a lot of prepared roast beefs at the meat counter--heck,  I love a pot roast above all things. However, the store-bought preparations had too much added stuff, so I decided to just buy a plain roast and do it myself. I do recall it's pretty easy.

And I discovered that string cheese has zero carbs!!! How marvelous is that! Apparently brie and cheddar are so low that I can add them in--remembering that list that cautioned no more than 4oz of cheese per day.

Oh, and I ordered a book, "The Grain Brain," wherein a neurologist claims that grains cause us humans all kinds of trouble. I think I needed that to up my motivation.

Bottom line: I'm seeing really high percentages of fat in my daily diet, but apparently that's ok (note that all the experts [except maybe the Grain Brain guy] say this low/no carb diet should be short term only), so I'm comfortable. When I feel the nibbles coming on, I grab olives, or olives and salami, or nuts. It's a pain cooking three meals a day (because I'm not used to it; haven't cooked for anyone in 20 years), but that protein seems to be filling. 

What, I Only Lost Five Pounds?

Last night I was craving, of all things, CORN BREAD!! Warm corn bread with maybe a little butter. Hummm. It was all I could do not to run off to the store to buy some ice cream. (How did I get from corn bread to ice cream? Humm, I guess corn bread is the carbohydrate I've been doing without while ice cream is my brain's symbol of pleasure.) Thank God I was already in bed so I would have had to get up and get dressed. I told myself: hold on now, tomorrow is Monday, weigh day. Wait just a little bit longer. See if the fates will reward you. If they don't, then go out for ice cream!

So today I weighed in. What, only a two pound loss? I reweighed twice. I quickly logged in to Loseit to see what was going on. Oh, okay, it was really a five pound loss. But it still felt wrong. It felt like I had been doing this for a thousand years and so should have lost more.

Can I do this no carb diet another week? Truthfully, the thought of eggs, fish, or chicken is extremely unpleasant. I think I'd rather starve. This past week I did an awful lot of snacking on olives and salami. I can't help thinking that in order to lose that five pounds, I probably lost 10 pounds of muscle and gained five pounds of fat.

Bottom line, however: another triumphant week! I exercised six of seven days and didn't binge. I even managed to pass my birthday eating only two pieces of birthday cake (carrot cake, my favorit-ist thing in the world!) that some well-meaning but devil-sent friend brought over.

Why We Sabotage Our Diets

Last night I blew it again. After going out to dinner with friends (still handling the no carb diet) I stayed up all night watching Band of Brothers and ended up eating most of the almonds and all of the dried cranberries I had bought just the day before. What was that all about?

So today I did a little research.

Everyday Health has a page on 14 Ways You're Sabotaging Your Diet.

• Eating too few calories--this has frequently been a problem for me, but because I already know about it, it doesn't sabotaging me now. When I've dieted in recent years, I've always carefully recorded calories in my tracker of choice, Loseit.com. Since my current long term play is not a diet, per se, but merely an attempt to eat without binging, I don't count calories. However, periodically I will record a day's food just to ensure I'm getting enough calories.
• Forbidding foods--this has also been a problem for me. It's way easier for me to forbid sweets then to see if I can stop at one. It's almost impossible for me to turn away from sweets, but it is possible for me to forbid them. So for me, I cannot foresee a time when I can keep ice cream, candy, cookies, cake, etc. in my house, period. Clearly this is an area to pursue further.
• Skipping breakfast--this has never been a problem for me.
• Guesstimating portions and thus overeating--this has never been a problem for me. As a matter of fact, when I'm counting calories, I weigh and measure everything!
• Sleeping too short or too long--this has frequently been a problem for me. I think it might be related to overdoing exercise. Anyway, sleep is an issue.
• Miscalculating workout calories--calculating the number of calories in exercise is difficult/tricky. Personally, I don't think it has caused me much of a difference in the past.

All the other items in the article don't make much sense if one is counting calories. Maybe these will become a problem for me now, since I'm not. We'll see. I'll try to watch myself.

• Binging on weekends
• Grazing
• Overeating after workouts
• Ignoring liquid calories like booze
• Getting apathetic
• Exercising less effectively
• Eating extra food late in the evening
• Yo-yo-ing and binging--duh?

Sirena Bernal's blog has a fascinating page on  hidden reasons why you sabotage your weight loss goals: familial ties to food, physical or sexual abuse in childhood, and an unsupportive spouse. Familial ties to food is a problem for me at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I guess it's also a problem when my grand nieces make their weekly visit. But of real interest to me was one sentence in this blog post: "Food has become a coping method to deal with negative emotions." It's a joke that women eat a pint of ice cream if their boy friend breaks up with them. Anyway, I want to return to the psychology of binging at another time.

Anyway, the Life Center of CT has a blog entry dealing with how emotional eating can sabotaging weight loss. The entry has a lonnnnng list of coping strategies. Unfortunately, strategies such as taking a bath, getting a massage, and listening to music have never done it for me.

So what's with the almonds and Band of Brothers? I have a couple of conclusions. For one, I'm pretty sure I ended the week tired. Possibly the no carb diet is exacerbating that problem. Maybe staying up all night was my subconscious way to guarantee I would take the weekend off? Secondly, I wonder what would have happened if I had a bag of sliced almonds instead of whole almonds? For sure that's what I'm buying next time because I can't see myself eating sliced almonds by the handful. And lastly, I'm glad I was full of healthy food when I started my Band of Brothers marathon because I didn't, after all, eat the entire bag of almonds!

Filling the Fridge

I went shopping today. My trainer wants me to try a no carb diet just to see what happens. Actually, according to a website I bookmarked, no carb isn't really no carb. Just almost.  Here's a shopping list.

So at Grocery Outlet I bought a number of packages of frozen protein:

• salmon pieces
• tuna pieces
• chicken breasts
• guinea hen

This is a risk because not only do I need to remember to defrost them in advance of need, but I'll need something to flavor them.

Then at Fresh & Easy I bought a bunch of prepared entries that met the criteria, a bag of almonds, a bag of dried cranberries (as only raspberries and cranberries are acceptable on a no carb diet), and some goat chees.

Then at the Dollar store I bought several cans of sardines, etc.

Succumbing to Temptation

I worked out at the gym or swam in the pool every day this week. Doing great. Then temptation reared its ugly head!

My grand nieces, seven and nine year old Anna and Lexi, usually spend Friday night at my apartment which means they can go
 downstairs on Saturday morning and return with an armload of cookies, muffins, etc. And they did.

I succumbed.

I probably ate a dozen cookies and half dozen muffins.

Why? I was doing so well.

All I know for sure is that I was tired.

Next weekend I will make sure the girls only bring upstairs what they will eat.

But why is it that sometimes I can look temptation in the eye without a twinge, walk right past a table laden with chocolate chip cookies, lemon bars, and See's candy...but other times I can't? I think I will look into the psychology of motivation or determination or...

The Start of a New Effort

I weighed in at 222#, the most I ever weighed in my life. It's time to make a new effort to NOT BINGE so I can lose weight.

THIS time I'm going to focus on the gym for exercise. I prepaid in January for a year of personal training, and I've arranged to come in as often as my trainer can schedule me.

THIS time I refuse to follow a diet. I'm only going to try to not B*I*N*G*E. I've been doing this for so long that I pretty much know what to do to increase the odds of success:

* AVOID TEMPTATION--This means I can't go downstairs to the lobby at 8:00am on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday when local stores donate (that means it's FREE) their leftover cake, cookies, muffins, pastries, and anything else you could possibly salivate over.

* ENSURE MY FRIDGE IS FULL OF HEALTHY FOOD--If something good for me and tasty isn't available, you know I'll find something else to eat if I'm hungry. Buying stuff requires that I face facts, accept how lazy I am, and buy something that I will actually eat. Kale is on everyone's lists, but have you actually tried eating it?